Page 201 of Callan

I won’t see Kayla again.

Forget about getting a job and spending my nights in my apartment.

My thoughts spin waywardly as I barely breathe, counting the moments to the sharp knock on the door that is supposed to come.

The noise reaches my floor, and I finally close my eyes, put a hand to my forehead, and wait.

Facing these things alone and not knowing what to expect is beyond rattling.

As the seconds tick away, I wonder whether they’ve walked onto the wrong floor and are looking for me in the building. And then I hear them knocking on someone else’s door and barking orders.

My eyes snap open, and I glance at my entrance before I see the wall shaking.

Loud voices thunder upstairs.

What??

I rise from my seat and look up.

With a little help from the thin walls that can’t keep a secret, I might catch some words.

There’s no time to do that as some sort of altercation ensues upstairs, and the cops threaten to shoot.

Shit, where do I go?

I shouldn’t just stand just below Carmen’s living room.

A body hits the floor, and another one seems to crash against the wall.

I slowly come into myself, and now I’m more concerned with what happens upstairs and whether Callan should know about it.I might need to search for him or talk to Beverly.

I retreat next to the window and secretly look outside.

The lights flicker red and blue across the snow while a few bystanders have lined up to watch the scene.

I don’t know how long it takes.

To me, it feels like an eternity before the cops exit the building with Carmen, her husband, the tattooed jerk, and the two other men I’ve seen before in shackles.

My mouth falls open as I look at them.

Have they all lived upstairs? What were they doing in Carmen’s apartment?

I’ll be damned. I should consider myself lucky that they’re the ones going away.

I crash into my armchair, watching them vanish in the cops’ cars, and before long, the vehicles move away, and my fear that someone might still come after me finally fades away.

32

CALLAN

Sometimes,the best way to change your life is to leave it all behind, and that’s exactly what Hudson did after my father’s death.

It’s not too often when someone so intricately enmeshed in a life of crime takes such a drastic measure to alter the path of his life.

He had no family, no kids, and no one to care for other than himself.

He said he was too old to live that kind of life, and by old, he meant tired.

---